Carolyn Ciopicz, left, and Marian Ciopicz, right, with their grandson. Photo: A

As a child, Marian Ciopicz used to play with his friends in piles of asbestos waste behind the now-notorious Wunderlich factory in Sunshine North.

“It was simply a terrific area for a child to play,” Mr Ciopicz told his lawyers in a deathbed statement in 2014.

“We threw handfuls of waste at each other, they exploded on impact, played hide and seek and war games and so on. When playing there it sometimes felt like we were in a snow storm. The air was full of white or grey dust and we were completely covered in it — hair, ears, all over our clothes and so on. It was great fun.”

The Wunderlich factory in McIntyre Road, North Sunshine in 1956. Photo: Supplied

Mr Ciopicz said children regularly played in the area behind the factory, which extended down to the railway line, but was not fenced off.

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It’s believed more than 20 people have contracted asbestos-related diseases from exposure to the factory, which operated until 1982. During peak production in the 1950s to the 1970s, clouds of asbestos dust rose above the factory roof, shrouding nearby streets, coating cars and making its way into homes.

According to Brimbank Council the asbestos on the former factory site — now the Westend Market Hotel — was capped and buried, but nearby residents have raised concerns about rabbits digging in the area and disturbing the deadly waste. It says the EPA is working with the current site owners to manage the risks.

After battling asbestosis for two years, Mr Ciopicz, a 69-year-old father of three and grandfather of six, died in October last year. After he died, his widow, Carolyn, kept up his battle for compensation and recognition that his illness had been caused by exposure to the site.

While justice came too late for Mr Ciopicz, on Thursday a Supreme Court jury awarded his family $467,000 in damages, the first asbestos-related payout in Victoria in a decade.

The jury found that the owner and operator of the former Wunderlich factory, Seltsam Pty Ltd, had negligently allowed Marian Copicz’s exposure to asbestos dust and fibres.

Slater and Gordon lawyer Michael Magazanik said the company had neglected to put up signs warning neighbours of the dangers of the site, or properly fence the McIntyre Road factory.

The jury was told that trucks leaving the factory spilled asbestos dust over local roads, and that fans inside the factory blew asbestos fibres into the air above the factory.

Silvio Comin, who worked at the Wunderlich factory, told the trial there was so much asbestos waste piled in the backyard behind the factory that he had to wear sunglasses to cope with the glare.

He said that dust at times escaped four to five metres into the air above the factory and when it was windy, it was “just like a snowstorm”.

Mr Magazanik said the family’s case had not been about money, but recognition.

“Most of all, this case is about recognition that this factory had caused their husband’s, father’s, grandfather’s death. They only wanted proper recognition. They wanted justice.”

In a statement released by her lawyers, Mrs Ciopicz spoke of her husband and family’s determination to get justice.

“Marian would have wanted me to finish what he started,” she said.

“Marian was a brave man who fought his illness to the very end. If it weren’t for that asbestos factory and its disgraceful pollution we would still have him here.

“Wunderlich let little children use its toxic dump as a playground. That is unbelievable. And so is the fact that they forced us to trial to get justice for Marian.”

Slater and Gordon says it has had dozens of calls from people concerned about their exposure to the site. It is the first asbestosis legal claim to run to verdict in Victoria in a decade. Previous cases have settled out of court.

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Costly to settle: Asbestos-related claims are rising for James Hardie, particularly in relation to mesothelioma. Photo: Sylvia Liber

James Hardie says it is seeing an increase in the number of asbestos claims relating to mesothelioma, the deadly cancer caused by prolonged exposure to the substance.

The construction firm, which revealed it had doubled its first-half profit on Thursday, said the number of asbestos claims relating to the cancer had risen above the company’s expectations.

In half-yearly statements released to the stock exchange on Thursday, Hardie said the average cost of asbestos claims for the six months to September was higher than the previous year due to an increase in mesothelioma claims, which were more costly to settle.

“We have seen some concerning trends in mesothelioma claims, which we have highlighted previously,” chief financial officer Russell Chenu said.

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“We’ve now got a better handle on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, but what we still don’t understand is the ‘why’.

“There’s still a lot of work going on in that space, but there is a definite trend in an increase in mesothelioma claims that the fund is experiencing.”

James Hardie’s payments for asbestos claims are tied to its cashflow. It pays up to 35 per cent of its annual net operating cash flow to an asbestos fund.

The company said the number of mesothelioma claims could be higher than its predictions due to the way it calculates a peak year of claims.

It forecast mesothelioma claims to peak in 2010-11, but said that, had it forecast a peak to occur later – for example, in 2015-16 – the estimates could change significantly.

“Mesothelioma is the most expensive of the asbestos disease types in terms of compensation,” Mr Chenu said.

“The fund is seeing an increase in the inflow of claims, and almost all of the increase in claims appears to be mesothelioma disease, rather than the other types of disease.

“That’s increasing the amount of payments relative to both last year and relative to an actuarial assessment that was done at March 2013.”

Mr Chenu said he could not say more on the topic because it was a matter for the fund and “as far as I’m aware, we don’t fully understand the cause of the increase in claims as of yet”.

James Hardie shares soared 14 per cent on Thursday morning after the company revealed it had doubled its operating profit in the first half of the financial year.

The company, which reports in US dollars, said its operating profit for the six months to September 30 was $US108.3 million ($116.4 million), up from $US56.3 million a year earlier.

The profit figure excludes asbestos, regulatory and liability adjustments, it said. Without stripping these out, its profit was higher at $US194.1 million.

Chief executive Louis Gries said the second quarter had benefited from an increase in sales in its US business, which reflected an improvement in the housing market relative to last year.

“Last year, we invested significantly in organisational capability in expectation of market growth in the US,” he said.

“This year we are benefiting from that investment, as evidenced by improved earnings before interest and tax margins.”

The company’s results benefited from the recent fall in the Australian dollar, which reduced its liability for asbestos claims in US dollar terms.

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But Geppert Bros. Inc., hired by STB after the collapse to clear the debris, brought in a certified asbestos removal firm last week to do limited work on the site.

City Councilman James F. Kenney has expressed concern about asbestos since the building went down, killing six people in an adjacent Salvation Army thrift shop.

Kenney said he had been told that asbestos was removed from the site last week. He said he wants detailed explanations from everyone involved. A source familiar with the cleanup, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to release information, confirmed Kenney’s assertion.

Of five companies asked for bids on the demolition work, Kenney said, at least one had mentioned asbestos removal in its bid proposal and sought $40,000 to deal with asbestos alone. STB went with the lowest of the bidders, Griffin Campbell Construction Co., which was willing to do the job for less than half the amounts sought by the other bidders, Kenney said.

“It’s starting to look like the asbestos report to the Health Department isn’t worth the paper it was written on,” Kenney said. “The firefighters, police, and others who dove into that debris to try to rescue people, those people need to have that information.”

Most of those involved – Hudson, Marinakos, and attorneys for the building owner and for Griffin Campbell – did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Hudson’s former employer, an environmental firm based in Delaware, said he had performed the inspections without the firm’s knowledge or consent.

A spokeswoman for Geppert Bros., Mary Pat Geppert, said, “There’s no story here,” but declined to provide any information, referring a reporter to the city’s Division of Air Management Services, an arm of the Health Department that handles asbestos issues.

Calls to the Health Department were referred to the mayor’s press office, which has so far failed to answer any questions about asbestos at the site – even to release a copy of the asbestos inspection report that Marinakos filed with L&I in January. (NBC10 obtained a copy of the asbestos report two weeks ago from undisclosed sources and has posted it on its website.)

Asbestos, long used as an insulation and fire-retardant material, is known to cause certain kinds of cancer. Because of that, its handling and removal has been regulated in the United States since the 1970s.

The extent of the contamination at 22d and Market is not known, because most of the debris has been carted off. Airborne particles – the most dangerous because they can be inhaled – may have blown away.

Edward M. Nass, a Philadelphia lawyer who specializes in asbestos-related personal-injury claims, said the likely hazard from the collapse was not great. Most people who develop asbestos-caused cancers were exposed to the material for years, in such work as shipbuilding, pipe fitting, or insulation installation, he said.

There are rare cases, he said, of people developing mesothelioma, a cancer caused only by asbestos, after only a day or two of exposure. He put the risk of anyone with direct exposure, either first responders or victims who were rescued, at “one in a million or less.”

It normally takes at least 10 years after exposure for victims to develop asbestos-related diseases, he said.

Another personal injury lawyer, Benjamin Shein, concurred. “I would not have cause for concern,” he said.

The Inquirer has filed a request under the state Right-to-Know Law for any reports dealing with asbestos found at the demolition site, before or after the building collapse, but the administration has not yet responded – a continuing theme since the June 5 accident.

For the last four weeks, the administration has said that it could not release documents related to the failed demolition because of the district attorney’s grand jury investigation.

But the District Attorney’s Office issued a statement this week saying that the grand jury probe did not supersede the state’s public records law and that the office had not instructed the city to withhold public records.

“The grand jury proceedings will of course be conducted in secrecy,” said the statement, released by Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for District Attorney Seth Williams. “But this incident has obviously provoked extensive public discussion, and there is no reason that public officials cannot discuss issues of public policy arising from publicly available facts and materials. Materials that were public information before the collapse should still be considered public information now.”

Other material withheld by the Nutter administration since the collapse includes a current list of licensed demolition sites; the successful application for city demolition work filed by Sean Benschop, the equipment operator facing involuntary manslaughter charges in the mishap; two iPhone videos recorded by Ron Wagenhoffer, an L&I inspector who apparently took his own life a week after the collapse; and the settlement memos explaining $878,000 in city tax dollars spent on demolition-related claims over the past five years.

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